


Red Haired Women

by paperclipsentimental



Category: Hanna (2011), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 11:52:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18799813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipsentimental/pseuds/paperclipsentimental
Summary: “I’ve just missed your heart,” Hanna says, twice; once, to a wounded caribou, blood and snow and terror in the whites of its eyes, and again, to Marissa Wiegler, who still looks angry, like she’d go at Hanna with her teeth, if only she could sit up enough to reach her. Not so different, the two creatures; in the end, neither of them wants to die. Both of them do.But she feels more sympathy for the caribou; it never tried to kill her, first.





	Red Haired Women

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! I just watched Hanna (2011) and thought it would be interesting to write about how Hanna might meet our favourite red haired assassin, Natasha! This is essentially what I think happens after the film, with Hanna's life.

When Hanna was eleven, she learnt how to swim. The forest was silent behind her, her father silent before her. His face was dark and cold in the early morning, frown lines sharp as glass. It was spring, so the ice was melting, but the water would be freezing anyway. This was a test – so was everything else.  

She didn’t know what would happen if she should fail.  

Her breath was a cloud before her; her eyelashes were crusted still with sleep. She had never failed before, never felt fear licking up her spine strong enough for her to tell her father no, to give up and go back inside. But. She looked at the black water, at the speed of it, at the depth. The bottom was invisible to her now, though in the middle of summer the river would flatten into a shallow enough stream that she could wade across without danger.  

That was summer.  

This was now.  

Swimming did not come naturally. She sank, choked, forced her way to the surface. This wasn’t easy; nothing ever was. This was death, curling his icy fingers around her ankles. This was what other people wrote about fear. This was her heart, beating out of her chest like she might never see the surface again.  

When she dragged herself out of the water and onto the bank, her father was backlit by the sun, face unreadable. But he had a look about him that said he might be smiling down at her, when he thought she couldn’t see him. “We’ll try again tomorrow,” he said, and extended a hand to her.  

 

She was born in the middle of the night, screaming. Her mother held her for all of two seconds before she was taken away for testing, already nothing more than the science inside her. The outside of the lab was nothing but a concept for the first two years of her life, until her father managed to find a way for them both to escape.  

People died for her; some unwillingly, on the floor of the lab with blood a halo of their refusal to die, not yet  _not yet._ But they did die for her, whether they liked it or not. Her mother died for her too; she knows this. Blood in the middle of the night and a smile on her face, endless faith in Erik and a pleasure in knowing that Marissa would never again lay a finger on her child.  

Hanna has eyes like her mother apparently, though she has no way of proving it. They look like something very cold, freezing in their intensity. Her father's always said she had expressive eyes, which she knew meant open, meant weak. They looked like her mothers, but they belonged to her, were her problem to claim. If they were weak, that was her weakness, not anybody else’s.  

Her hair grows long, tangled and wild. She likes that she doesn’t look like her father, likes that they share nothing but the brutal strength they carry together. She likes that they have nothing in common but the things they have decided to make together, the house and the woods they live in together.  

When he reads to her, when his hands untangle her hair, when he teaches her how to escape a choke hold, that feels like love. When he teaches her about the stars, about the galaxy around her and how to be safe in it, that feels like love, too.  

Nobody has ever held her hand, but when her father walks out of the door and she throws open her window to watch him leave, that almost feels like love. She doesn’t really want to kill people, but sometimes there are people who have to die. Her father understood that, and now, she understands it too.  

 

 

She kills the woman with red hair, face pressed tight into the corner of her neck and shoulder, feeling her pulse skyrocket up and up, and thinks  _yes, fear me. Yes, be afraid._ When the woman dies, Hanna feels her pulse go silent. She thinks;  _do I really believe that it could be that easy? Do I believe she would walk right into my open arms?_ The answer is no, to both questions. But she can’t know that, not then, not as her arms were still full of the dead woman with the face of the murderer who took her mother.  

 

She fights; her whole life she fights, her father, in the snow with his face unsmiling, until she could beat him in the dark, with a gun and then with a knife, and then with her hands and nothing else. She fights the men who want to kill her. There are many; she is always fighting. When she hears the gun shot that has killed her father, her knees hit the ground. There is the taste of blood in her mouth, a ringing in her ears that has nothing to do with the noise of a shot and everything to do with the feeling of his hands around hers, showing her how to aim, how to grip a knife and snap her elbow back into his nose, half speed and both of them frowning in concentration.  

Most of these things, he only shows her once.  _Once should be enough, and then you should know._ But he shows her how to throw knives a dozen times, long after she knows how, and they both pretend it has nothing to do with the fact that it’s nearly the only time they touch. His grip around her is a hug. She is fifteen years old and wanting to live, afraid to die. Heart in mouth, eyes wide open for the first time, blood beating like hail on a roof, ice in her veins like swimming in winter. This is what it means to want to live forever.  

 

The red woman is not dead. Not for real. Hanna is tired of death, tired of the look of people when their life has gone. She’s tired of thinking about to look on Sophie’s face back in the shipping dock, white with terror and aimed in her direction. (She will never see Sophie again, nor her family, but she’ll always remember the way they opened themselves up to her, the press of Sophie's hand against her wrist, the sound of them all sleeping a crashing hurricane in her heart. This is what family means, to most people.)  

So, she is willing to walk away at first. But then it comes down to this; a girl who wants to live, fighting a woman who wants her to die. It comes down to the arrow in her hand, the curl of the wind on her cheek, the wet noise the red woman makes when she sucks for breath.  

“I’ve just missed your heart,” Hanna says, twice; once, to a wounded caribou, blood and snow and terror in the whites of its eyes, and again, to Marissa Wiegler, who still looks angry, like she’d go at Hanna with her teeth, if only she could sit up enough to reach her. Not so different, the two creatures; in the end, neither of them wants to die. Both of them do. But she feels more sympathy for the caribou; it never tried to kill her, first.  

 

After the red woman dies, for real this time, Hanna goes to New York. She hides on boats and in the back of cars, thinking of nothing as she travels along endless roads. Well, not nothing. Something. Her father – not her father, not really, but at the same time, yes, what else could her be, when it was his hands that shaped her, his palms that held her steady – her father is dead. That was never the plan, as much as she knew. He had certainly never made it sound like he was planning to die; in fact, it sounded very much like he was planning to do much more living.  

But little blonde girls stand out less in New York than they do in most parts of the world, and she has to lie low. Lie low. She doesn’t speak the way most people speak; their language, yes, but the nuances? The inside jokes? She doesn’t understand any of it. Regurgitating the statistics of her fake life does  _not_ a realistic human being make. She speaks nearly forty languages well enough to pass. Good thing she’s always been a fast learner.  

 

She learns to listen, to look. She learns the secrets and the corners of New York, the people. Her hands hurt when she does pushups on the gravel, but her blood learns the scent of the city. She starts by running packages for dope runners in the small streets, because she looks pretty and she can cry on command if a cop happens to ask her any awkward questions, and she can lie on the spot like she was born to do it. She can run fast and climb quickly, and nobody who chases her ever manages to catch her. 

Favors gained here and there rise her steadily up the slippery ranks. She holds a knife at an idiot would-be assassins throat and says, “Do you want me to kill him,” and the kingpin who’s life she just saved lowers his glasses at her.  

“Where in the hell did you come from?” He asks instead of answering the question. The would-be killer trembles in Hanna’s arms, and she shoves him to the ground, pinning him with a foot. A smile creeps slowly across her face, like the sun sliding across a wall. “I’ve always been here,” she replies. And when he asks again; “I came from the forest.” 

And then she’s in. Really in. No more drug runs; she stands in at meetings and exchanges, watches as words are traded, deals are sealed. She learns the value of looking unimportant, and then she learns more, until she knows every secret and every piece of gossip in the city; she knows about every murder almost before it happens, knows every name and face of every important man or woman in the country. She keeps a collection of secrets in her pockets, lies and truths in her palms, and she learns very important things about very important people.  

She does not align herself with anyone in particular, is friendly with anyone. Everyone knows she’s there to keep the peace; when things get rowdy, she’s the one who gets her knuckles a little bloody. All the people who sit at the tables she stands over know that anyone who makes an attempt at killing will have to face her.  

_That’s power_ , she thinks.  _And I didn’t even have to kill anyone for it._  The men wish they had daughters like her; they teach her how to fight urban, dirty – or, dirtier than she already does – and how to show threats collected in the palms of her hands, how to play poker and act like she has good cards, how to act like she’s bluffing and double bluffing and triple bluffing, how to lie with her eyes and her posture, without using her mouth.  

The mobsters like her because she isn’t frightened of the police; she carries important packages and letters, and soon she lives on the invisible line of safety between them all; nobody touches her, because she has hands in every pocket, every somebody who’s somebody knows she isn’t to be fucked with.  

This is all about survival, but that doesn't mean that she can’t enjoy it.  

 

Hanna is twenty-three years old, deadly as a pickaxe and twice as sharp, three times as brutal. Everyone she knows likes her, even the people who half wish her dead. This makes her a very interesting person to some very important people. The penalty for laying a hand on her is death. She still doesn’t like men in tracksuits, especially blond ones. She still doesn’t like women with red hair.  

 

Hanna has grown a lot since she was a child; she imagines most people do. Have. She can swim without choking, run without gasping. Her hair no longer tangles, and she sleeps with it in a braid so that she can still fight as soon as she wakes up. So, she’s changed a lot since she was a kid. But. She still doesn’t like women with red hair. So when Natasha Romanov sits opposite her in a local café, her eyes narrow.  

“Hey,” Natasha smiles, friendly. A fake face, but a good one. “I’m Emily.” 

“I know who you are,” Hanna replies quietly, eyes sliding away from her book, and the smile flickers. “Natasha.” She tilts her head, aware of how her unblinking eyes look inhuman. Then there is the quiet silence of two very dangerous woman regarding each other carefully, weighing up the odds.  

“Then you must know why I’m here,” Natasha says, giving up the act.  

“Humor me,” Hanna replies, ice and nothing else, tone even. “I can’t imagine SHIELD could want me for anything good.” 

Again, Natasha’s face flickers. A smart woman; she can see a threat clear enough. “We want to recruit you.”  

Hanna feels an eyebrow raise. “And you thought lying to me would be a good start to this relationship?” 

Natasha glances around the café, at the passersby who might be caught in their crossfire. “Let’s go for a walk,” she suggests.  

“So your pet sniper outside can blow my head off if I make the wrong move?” She raises a brow. “I don’t think so. I’d rather fight here, where the people wouldn’t pay attention to what I’m doing if I killed you on the floor over there.” 

Natasha goes smooth and that’s how Hanna suspects that she’s called on the final trump card Natasha thought she had hidden. Thinks about poker, the triple bluffing. Suspects that Natasha would never show a tell quite so obviously as that. “Do you think you could win? I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have.” 

She reaches out a hand, rests it on Hanna’s wrist. “This doesn’t have to be a fight.” 

Hanna smiles, a little sympathetic. “Yes, it does. You know why?” 

“Why?” And in a half second Hanna flips a knife out of god knows where, has it in the hand Natasha has her hand over, has it pressed into the tendon there, vulnerable. Natasha goes to jerk, but Hanna presses the knife a little deeper, drawing a line of blood, shaking her head.  

“You fight for the side of the angels, I don’t. That says what it says, wouldn’t you agree?”  

Natasha is staring at the knife; she never sees the second one coming. Hanna has it pressed into the open junction of her throat, uses it to tilt back her head. “You see these people? They wouldn’t pay notice if I cut your throat where you sit. They know who I am, they don’t know you.” She leans in. “Sometimes, there is power in having a name.” 

“Sometimes, there’s power in being predictable too. Barton?” 

Hanna has enough time for her eyes to go wide before Barton bursts through the window, a picture of concentrated focus. She glances at Natasha and smiles, cuts a line over her artery. Blood pours, immediate and vicious, and Natasha claps a hand over it to stop the bleeding. Her jerking slices the other knife across her wrist, and she curses as that begins to bleed as well.  

Satisfied that she was out of the fight at least for now, trying to stop the bleeding, Hanna turns to Barton who has a gun already aimed steady at her head. It’s not the first time she’s been in this position; it won’t be the last. Her smile is a pond freezing over, the first taste of snow. “Do you want to do this now?”  

He cocks his head. “What’s the alternative?”  

“I could come with you, right now. No more fighting. You can take Natasha to medical, stop her bleeding. Doesn’t she look a little pale to you?” Her teeth bare. “It’s nothing fatal. I know how to play nice, too.”  

Barton considers her, gaze unwavering. “You might, but I don’t play nice at all,” he said, and shot her in the shoulder. Luckily for her, it was a tranquilizer. Nothing permanent, but it was pretty damn efficient. Hanna wavered, and sat back in her chair. She shared a look with Natasha and grimaced through the way the world was swaying in front of her. “Men,” she muttered. “No taste for the finer dramatics.” 

 

Later; “She’s a hellcat,” Natasha spits, brushing a speck of dried blood out of her hair. “A fucking child with the fighting ability of ten men.”  

Fury rolls his head in her direction, lazy and curious. “She has you right pissed off, doesn’t she?” 

Natasha is a very deadly person, cruel as anyone who lived through what she lived through is expected to be. Her kindness comes through in other ways. In not hesitating, in wordless exchanges and cups of warm tea pressed palm to palm in quiet buildings. Small kindnesses, simple ones. Deadliness lives in the corners of those kindnesses, share the same haunted corridors.  

Even her rounded edges have sharp blades. And she’s never met someone who is so exactly like her before – Hanna has eyes like her. Not in color, or shape or size. In intensity. Those are eyes that have lived dangerous lives, seen hell.  

They’re eyes she sees every day in the mirror.  

“I want to be the one to debrief her.” 

 

But just before that;  

“I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.” someone says, just as Clint is hauling the girl up onto his shoulder. He turns. It’s an old woman, hair long ago gone grey. “Every damn fool knows she belongs to important people. You take her, people are going to come looking.” 

Clint smiles, glances around at the coffee shop, the sun splashing through the winters clouds to bless the walls. The people, all studiously ignoring them. Heads tucked into newspapers and mugs, no curious glances here, no sir. “They can look as much as they want,” he says. “But I doubt they'll ever find her.” 

 

Now; Natasha pulls out the chair opposite Hanna, grimacing as it comes out with a painful, accusing screech.  

“I did not think you would be the one to come speak with me,” Hanna admits, tilting her head. “I didn’t think I would be that important, to a person like you.” Her voice is steady, but her pulse is speeding in her throat. She’s never been on this side of an interrogation table before, not once. She remembers that therapist, when she was playing the harmless lamb and waiting for them to send her the person for her to rip the throat out of. He had been a child therapist, or at least he had been pretending to be one. She had looked like a child, but she wasn’t one; he had never stood a chance of knowing anything about her.  

Natasha tosses her hair over her shoulder. “I wouldn’t normally,” her lips twitch. “But you interest me. I think I have a better chance than the rest of those idiots.” 

“Well if anyone would trick me into telling you anything important, it would be you,” Hanna says. “You already got me once.” There is an uncomfortable pause. “It was very well done, she ads. “If I wanted to fool me, that’s how I would have done it.” Her mouth twists. “I was convinced I had you on the back foot, but it was the other way around. That has never happened to me before.” 

There’s something about the way she phrases that. The pressure on the words, the way Hanna aims them. Natasha resists the urge to lean in. “Did I really catch you on the back foot? Or were you planning for that, as well?” 

The barest flicker of a smirk touches the corner of Hanna's mouth, just barely, and Natasha’s hackles raise.  

Hanna leans in, bright eyes intent. “I like you, Natasha. But you said yourself that you have been doing this a long time. You think you are the be all and end all of this game; you think you are the only one who knows how to lie. You think you're the only one who knows how to play. Even now, do you think you are getting anything from me that I don’t want you to have?” Hanna stretches and Natasha’s eyes flick to her hands, her bare hands; she’s shaken the cuffs, and she’s been sitting here this whole time making conversation.  

“What do you want?” Natasha asks. “There’s always something; what do you want?” 

Hanna stands, leisurely. “I wanted to know about this place. You have lots of secrets, big secrets. And I heard you had been talking about me.” She holds up a strange device, like a flash drive but with a small screen and a keypad. “Everything you know, I know now too.” 

And then she is gone. 

Fury storms into the room a minute later and finds Natasha with her chin resting on her clasped hands. She’s smiling, slightly. “Are you out of your god dammed mind?” Fury asks, fists flexing. “She just walked out of here with every secret I have ever managed to find and you’re sitting in here with a smile on your face like this  _isn’t_ the worst thing that could have happened today.” 

“This isn’t the worst thing she could have done,” Natasha counters, standing and brushing invisible lint off her clothing. “Not by far. If she wanted to, she could have killed me and then probably half the people in this building.” 

Fury gestures with inarticulate rage, mouth opening and closing. Natasha patted him on the shoulder. “Give it a year or two,” she said. “She’ll get sick of running the country and come in. We lit the fuse, just like I said we would.” 

“This is  _not_ what I thought you meant when you said we’d light a fuse on her,” Fury snaps, but he’s trailing after Natasha anyway, still muttering.  

Natasha pauses and looks down the corridor, left and right, and then smiles. Hanna is long gone, and the secrets with her. That’s okay. Natasha was a bit like that too, when she was a little younger. “I like her,” she says, smiling again when it sets Fury off on another round of cussing.  

There’s a post-it note on the wall opposite the door, with the address of a coffee shop and a date and time written in scrawling letters. The words,  _I wasn't lying when I said I liked you._ Yep, Natasha thought. She’ll be back.  

 

 


End file.
